Close to Home
by Astralis
Summary: She's thinking about all this now because she's curled up on her favourite chair, which is the room they call the study, simply because it had to be called something. NS


**DISCLAIMER: **I hope no-one seriously thinks they're mine, because they aren't, and I'm just playing with them.

* * *

Sara has an embarrassingly large collection of relationship books and she keeps them in a box underneath her side of the bed where she likes to hope Nick won't discover them. An old forensic science journal on top of the books provides only a minimum of camouflage.

She started buying these books in college, when she was 18 and was trying, naively, to find someone with whom she could live Happily Ever After. Another 18 years and 36 books later, she's wondering if she's found him, and what Happily Ever After really means.

Nick is... well, Nick is a lot of things. Sometimes he seems to be formed entirely of annoying habits, so it's a good thing she happens to think that the sum of the whole is greater than that of the parts, and that, this time, in this relationship, she's willing to let the good outweigh the bad. There's something about what she has with Nick that means she won't turn tail and run, not this time. It's probably the same thing that made her say yes when he suggested they move in together.

As far as she's aware he doesn't know about the books in the box under the bed. If he does he hasn't mentioned it, for which she's pathetically grateful. They're a weakness she hates to admit to, like the women's magazines and romance novels she threw out before they moved in together. Something stopped her from binning the relationship books, and she still reads them. Most of them don't really help, because forget Mars and Venus, the people who write these books seem to inhabit another galaxy altogether. Even so, reading them makes her feel like she's doing something to benefit their relationship, usually at those times when she's upset about something he's done and he's oblivious.

Natural pessimism and her un-Sara-like choices of reading material had taught her that Happily Ever After wasn't really going to be that, but she still gets disappointed every time things don't work out quite the way she would've liked.

She's thinking about all this now because she's curled up on her favourite chair, which is the room they call the study, simply because it had to be called something. Often they sit in here together, she on her computer, Nick on his laptop, and then they end up sending each other instant messages. But he's not in here at the moment, he's out in the living room with Warrick and Greg and Archie, and they're behaving like overgrown children watching some sports thing Archie recorded last night while they were all at work.

Sara doesn't begrudge Nick his friends, and she learnt a long time ago that jealousy wouldn't keep a relationship alive. The guys usually come round here, for whatever reason, and she doesn't mind that either.

Much.

She won't admit it, to Nick or to herself, because it seems so silly that having them all here should put her off balance so much. She can cope with them at work, in the lab, but for them to see her outside the lab makes her anxious. It's unsettling. She's used to work intruding on her personal life, just never like this. She's not used to work - here embodied by Warrick, Greg and Archie - realising she _has _a private life. Bringing Nick home for the first time was bad enough, all those long months ago. She'd been scared then, scared he'd reject her when he saw, well, _her_.

And now, when they come, she retreats into the study or the bedroom, resenting their presence, and resenting her own resentment. She pretends to herself that she leaves because Nick needs to have time alone with his friends without a clingy girlfriend hanging around, despite the fact that every time he asks her if she wants to come join them. She doesn't want to; it's bad enough when they go round to Warrick's or Archie's or Greg's, and she goes because that's what a girlfriend should do, accompany her boyfriend to things like that, and so she goes and sits beside Nick, trying to find something to say, and feeling horribly conspicuous and strangely peaceful at the same time as Nick puts a hand on her leg or an arm around her shoulders.

It must be half time, because she can hear people moving around. Sure enough, Nick knocks lightly on the study door and pushes it open. "You okay"

"Of course" she says. "Who's winning" she asks, out of politeness.

"Archie's team. He's happy."

"I'll bet" she says, and smiles.

Someone - Greg, she thinks - calls something from the living room. "They want to see the rest. Want to come watch"

"I hate football" she says.

"I know. Just making sure." He shuts the door and she hears him walking back to the living room, and the sound of the game starts again. She leans over and switches on her police scanner, and wonders just how it is he puts up with her. She spends about as much time wondering about that as she spends wondering about how she puts up with him, and about what they're both doing in this relationship. Sometimes loving each other doesn't seem like it should be quite enough, and even knowing that it is she can't seem to get her head around it.

She sits there and tunes into the police scanner, tuning out the shouts and the cheering. Sara's always used the scanner as a distraction, but it doesn't always work. This time it's probably because she's suddenly lonely - not that there's anything unusual about that. The relationship books testify to just how lonely she was before Nick assumed the role of Romantic Hero in her life, and since they've been together those times of loneliness have been even more acute, although they happen less often. Right now she misses him; they've been working separate, stupid hours lately. She seems not to have seen him properly for too long, and now he's out there being boyish with the guys and she's feeling sorry for herself.

When the game's over and she hears the farewell tones of the guys and the door shutting behind them and the sudden silence in the living room, she just waits. The door to the study opens once more, just like it did before, and just like before he says"You okay"

"Yeah" she says, feeling a little bit silly as he comes in and sits on the arm of her chair. "Who won"

"Archie's team."

She smiles, but doesn't touch him, even though she can feel heat, warmth, _something_, radiating from his body. They sit there, just being, thinking, whatever, without touching. Finally he says"I'm going to bed. Coming"

She accepts his invitation, lets him take her hand and pull her up and out of the study, and in silence they get ready for bed, going through familiar movements, familiar rituals. She's not sure what she wants to say, and she wouldn't have the words for it either. She hasn't yet found the book which tells her exactly what to say in every possible situation, and because of that she always seems to be searching for the adequate words and not finding them.

Nick pulls the curtains shut and closes out the daylight and suddenly they're in their own world, bedroom door closed so this is all about them, being together. At first this going to be together every day made her nervous at the same time as it made her happy, but now it's so routine she almost takes it for granted. It's a little awkward today, probably because he knows she's bothered about something.

What's silly is that she doesn't even know what she's upset about, not really. It has to do with Warrick and Greg and Archie being here, and their sharing something with Nick that she can't understand. It has to with how she doesn't seem to have seen much of him for the last few days, because quick minutes at work just aren't enough. It has to do with her own need for perfection and knowing that she'll never get it.

They lie in bed and there's a gap between them and she's needing something, anything, she's not sure what, she never is. Nick says, softly"Come here" and for a moment she does nothing, she won't be at his beck and call, but she's still trying to figure out what she wants, right this minute, and maybe the answer will be in him. Disappointed with herself - because when the hell did she start _needing_ someone else so desperately, because she once thought she'd needed Grissom and now she really knows what needing is - she shifts over, lets him wrap his arms round her, raises one of her hands so she can touch the skin of his neck, gently running one finger over it. "I wish I could make it better" Nick says. She doesn't ask what he's referring to, though it would be interesting to know what he thinks is wrong. At least he hasn't gotten defensive this time: they both do that far too easily. Maybe he's missed her too.

She relaxes a little as he rubs circles on her back with one hand, and still more as he slips the hand under her tank top and keeps going in the same pattern, the palm of his hand warm and rough against her back. She can't think of a response to Nick's comment, and so she hopes he doesn't need one.

The movement of his hand gradually slows as he falls asleep, and comes to a halt, and she opens her eyes and focuses on Nick, his long slow gentle breaths, the look of total peace of his face. He's beautiful like this. The word doesn't seem quite right, not to describe a man like Nick, but there's no other word she can use.

It still surprises her that he lets her, Sara Sidle, geek, workaholic, hopelessly inept with relationships, see him like this. As they lie in bed together she often wonders why it happened, why he wanted her when he could have had half the women, and probably a lot of the men, of Las Vegas. It seems wrong, somehow, that someone like him should be with someone like her. Sometimes she thinks this should never have happened, but it did, it _is._

She has no answers, not to any of the myriad questions that bother her when she's trying to sleep, or when he's off with the guys, or when they've had a fight. The relationship books can't provide them, and nor can her intellect, which can come up with the answers to so many other problems. Love is a mystery, she can't qualify it or quantify it, can't measure it in any way or reproduce it in a laboratory. It bothers her, that uncertainty, and her inability to channel it, to bend it to human will. Nick can accept those things; he doesn't have to subject them to intellectual scrutiny, he doesn't think himself into headaches searching for the answers to badly defined questions.

She envies him that ability.

Eventually, even Sara needs to sleep. Her circular thoughts have become tangled and her eyes won't stay open, so she lets herself give up and drift off to sleep in Nick's arms, and the closer she gets to sleep the less important the questions become, until for a time she isn't aware of there being any questions.

She wakes up, still in his arms, when the alarm goes off. She reaches across his body to turn it off and then they lie there, looking at each other, trying to convince themselves that they need to get out of bed. He runs his fingers through her hair, pulls her to him and kisses her softly, and she responds in kind. "Love you" she murmurs when the kiss is over, because this is the sort of time when that's easiest to say.

"I know" he says, and rolls on top of her, even though they really should be getting up. "I do know, Sara. But I just wish I could make it better."

She wraps her arms around his neck and says"Maybe there _is_ no better."

"Oh, Sara."

"I know."

They lie there in silence, and for a few moments she thinks she's going to cry and she doesn't even know why. All she knows is that she loves Nick and she hates problems and questions and not being able to solve them, alone or together. She has 37 relationship books under the bed but she can't answer those questions. She'd like to be able to write it all off, to convince herself that it doesn't matter, or take the easy route and blame hormones, work, stress. Her mind won't let her do that, won't accept that maybe the fact that they love each other is the answer and that maybe the questions really don't matter.

Soon he kisses her on the forehead and goes to have a shower, and she doesn't join him like she sometimes does. She lies in bed alone, and then has a shower herself, the bathroom steamy and smelling like Nick's shower gel. Masculine. She likes that smell, and she's comforted, though she doesn't quite understand why that should be.

Nick has made her toast and coffee. It's his gesture to something - to her, maybe - because he swears he's allergic to the kitchen. She usually cooks, and makes him wash the dishes, and admittedly the kitchen - and her temper - is safer when he's not messing around in there. But toast and coffee, that's good, not even Nick can screw that up. They eat what they don't call breakfast, because it's about 6pm, sitting in companionable silence at the table, reading this morning's paper.

They go to work, in that same silence, and she's grateful for not having to find words. She and Warrick have a homicide, a D.B in a house in Summerlin that turns out to be _two_ dead bodies and a half-finished suicide note, and they're there almost all night. She's glad, because she has something to occupy her mind, something that _can_ be untangled, that _does_ have an answer. Death is easier than life, sometimes.

If Warrick suspects something's wrong, he doesn't mention it. Nor does he mention her and Nick, but then, no one really does while they're on the clock. In the break room, maybe, but usually there's a sharp delineation between work and home, public and private. It's uncomfortable, but it's the only way she can handle it. She lives one life while on the clock and another the rest of the time.

She works more overtime than she needs to that morning and goes home to find Nick folding laundry. She's instantly guilty. "I said I'd do that" she says, as if reprimanding him for it will make it his problem.

Nick shrugs. "You were working."

Sara watches him for a moment, then fishes one of his t-shirts out of the basket of clean clothes. "Okay. Fine." She folds it and puts it on top of the pile of his clothes.

Nick catches her eye and echoes her. "Fine." He flashes a grin and she can't help smiling back at him.

They work in a silence vastly different from that of the previous evening, and when they've finished they order Chinese takeout, just because they can, and eat it facing each other on the sofa stealing bits of each other's meals.

Eventually Nick takes her plastic utensils and styrofoam boxes and piles them up with his on the floor. He tells her to turn around and she does, sitting with her back to him and her legs crossed and feeling perplexed until she feels his hands on her shoulders, massaging gently. "Mmmmm."

"Hard night" Nick asks quietly.

"Hard week."

"That's true."

As Nick's hands work their way slowly down her back she feels herself relaxing, almost reluctantly letting go of the tension and irritation which have been sustaining her for the past week or so. Finally his hands reach the top of her trousers and he slides his arms around her waist and pulls her back against him. She tilts her head backwards and rests it on his shoulder

Even relaxed there's part of her mind that she can't shut down. She can't remember a time when she wasn't observing everything that happened around her, a section of her mind always on high alert searching for trouble.

At the moment there's nothing for that part of her mind to sieze hold of. There's Nick and the sofa and this domesticity she still can't quite believe is actually hers, and for a time it actually seems like enough. She can't be anything but contented at the moment, and she can't even manage to be concerned about it.

Later she'll be worried about not being concerned about it.

Sara closes her eyes and breathes.

Right now, she can live with this.

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**THE END**


End file.
